


Out Come the Wolves

by atheartagentleman



Series: Out Come the Wolves [1]
Category: Les Misérables (2012), Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Schönberg/Boublil, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Gen, Les Amis de l'ABC - Freeform, Paris - Freeform, but this is also my way of addressing bits of fanon that I enjoy reading, but which jar with me, plot will happen I promise, set in actual Paris so there will be a lot of French cultural references etc, this is equal parts story and headcanon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-15
Updated: 2013-07-25
Packaged: 2017-12-15 00:40:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,733
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/843296
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/atheartagentleman/pseuds/atheartagentleman
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She orchestrates and is fearless like she has nothing to lose. Except, she does have something to lose now, doesn’t she? Only, she’s got the habit of thinking that way and can’t seem to shake it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Eponine wants nothing to do with social work, even though it’s what everyone assumes she’s studying. She has seen both too many and too few social workers – a string of anonymous, bespectacled, kindly faces, who patronisingly introduced themselves in slow tones, giving only their first names, who asked obvious questions, scribbled notes on battered clipboards and were never seen again. There would be a new one the next month. But where were they – Jeanne, Thomas, Frank and the rest of them – when dear old dad made Azelma put her hand through a window to fake a break-in? When Montparnasse started spending too much time with Gavroche, taking him out into the city and putting new, ugly words in his mouth and a mean spark into his eyes? When she herself faced death-threats from multiple quarters for interfering in one of the family schemes?

And somehow, everyone looks at her expectantly and seems disappointed when she declares that she is studying drama, and taking extra classes in history and maths via the Cned. They should be glad she hasn’t turned to crime already – the odds were against her on that one. And that’s all she’s willing to give. They have no right to ask more of her than that, like her suffering marks her out for a higher purpose. She has done enough. Now it’s her turn.

Gavroche is the only exception. She still takes him out of that house whenever she can, still feels like she needs to look after him. It’s only ever when thinking about him that she feels guilty, like her choices constitute a dereliction of duty, instead of an escape.

She has a partial scholarship and student loans and lives in shady digs with shady people, but it’s still a struggle. She doesn’t steal – not anymore – not out of any sense of obligation, but rather because criminality is a tie to her parents. She refuses to think of them as family. Instead, she holds down two jobs, tending bar and manning the local theatre’s ticket office (she’ll be the one on stage some day, she swears. She has been acting since she learned to bat her eyelashes and spit life in the face while laughing). She moves in with a ragged crew of brawlers and bikers, which is how she meets Bahorel, who is notionally a law student, but who seems to spend most of his time getting into fights.

She orchestrates and is fearless like she has nothing to lose. Except, she does have something to lose now, doesn’t she? Only, she’s got the habit of thinking that way and can’t seem to shake it.

It’s through Bahorel that she gets involved with Les Amis de l’ABC, though ‘involved’ may be too strong a word. He asks her one day whether the bar where she works has some kind of back-room he and a political group he’s with could use, because they got expelled from the last place. She doesn’t ask why, and she doesn’t share this information with her boss when trying to talk him around to the idea. She likes Bahorel, or she would have given up on the task sooner, but she’ll undoubtedly still cash in the favour one day. Like him or not, a favour is a favour, and Eponine always keeps count. Her boss agrees, for a fee, and saddles her with the job of keeping an eye on them, ‘since she’s apparently so keen’. Fucking wanker. Eponine almost calls it all off then and there, because the last thing she needs is more time away from her studies, but she can use the money, and so she doesn’t.

She had expected a group of angry blue-collar workers, rowdy tough guys on minimum wage. Bahorel himself occasionally displays signs of being financially comfortable, but he lives as though he weren’t and hangs out with people who aren’t. Instead, the group is mostly students from across Paris and its various institutions of higher learning. They are angry though, in that slightly self-righteous way the educated often are. Eponine scoffs at them at first, chalking their behaviour up to some kind of saviour complex – she has seen their likes before. She keeps busy with homework in the corner of the room, just making sure they don’t get too overexcited, and listening with half an ear. They know their stuff despite lack of first-hand experience, she’ll give them that, and she’s a good enough judge of character to recognise that they are good people. She starts to listen more closely, though she never joins the debate and they mostly forget she’s there.

She is never even introduced to most of them, and pieces together who is who based on snatches of conversation and anecdotes recounted by Bahorel. She knows who Enjolras is, of course. The first time they use the bar as a meeting-place, he marches straight over to her, shakes her hand and thanks her with solemn warmth for her contribution to their cause. Eponine can only blink at him in bemusement, before he has swept off again to talk to a man wearing glasses who has just come in. The second boy, who had entered the room with Enjolras, sees her expression and chuckles.

‘That’s Enjolras, our fearless leader. He tends to have that effect on people. I’m Courfeyrac.’

‘Pleased to meet you,’ she isn’t particularly, and it probably shows in her voice, but Courfeyrac (she would laugh at his name, but has not got a leg to stand on in that department herself) is unfazed.

‘I’m going to need you out of here promptly at seven,’ she adds, just to be clear.

‘So soon? Most people are sorrier than that to see me go,’ Courfeyrac is grinning cheekily now, and adds in a wink for good measure – and hey, apparently people actually do that, and seriously why? – before adding ‘You may yet change your mind too.’

Eponine decides not to dignify this with a response, and simply raises a pierced eyebrow at him, her lips faintly pursed. She has absolutely no patience for this kind of shit tonight. She is here out of the goodness of her heart (sort of), and Courfeyrac seems like every sleazy jerk she has ever known: over-confident, too sure of their own good looks, and making assumptions about her and what she does with her body the moment they see her. In another setting, on another night, she might have responded to his flirting (he’s really not bad looking), but she is going along with this as a favour to Bahorel, and by extension to all of these clowns, and she is sick of it already. She thinks she preferred Enjolras and his bizarreness.

Courfeyrac, to his credit, does not take the rejection personally. He shrugs it off like water off the back of a duck, grins at her again, and heads over to join the intensely conversing duo by the window. Soon, the three of them are entirely absorbed with one another and Eponine is forgotten. She settles herself at what will become her table and pulls out a library copy of Molière. She had hoped to leave him behind when she left high school, but no such luck, and her current assignment involves internalising L’Ecole des Femmes to a point where she will be able to improvise in character when different scenarios are shouted at the students on stage from across the school’s auditorium.

It does nothing at all to improve her mood.


	2. Exercises in Drama

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jehan is the next one whose name she can associate with a face. Considering how often Bahorel talks about him, Eponine is honestly surprised she hasn’t met him sooner...
> 
> They’re not friends, exactly, but maybe they could be.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Betaed by the wonderful Tumblr user human-ithink, without whom I would be hopelessly lost.

Jehan is the next one whose name she can associate with a face. Considering how often Bahorel talks about him, Eponine is honestly surprised she hasn’t met him sooner...

He’s very striking: 1m90, broad in the shoulders and tiny in the waist, with long limbs and bony elbows. His face is shockingly elfin, delicate-boned and pale and freckled, and wreathed in a cascade of hair the colour of old rust, which brushes the lower edge of his shoulder-blades. He wears mismatched clothes, and bright prints, and flowers and alice-bands and velvet frock-coats, and Eponine gets whiplash trying to track his gender expression the first few times she’s around him. She has never met anyone like him before, and she thinks she probably stares too much, until she gets used to him. She doesn’t think he likes her very much, and she can’t really blame him. He’s a romantic, in love with love, but not in a soft way. He is all edges, and glitter, and he performs spoken word poetry that is as fierce and angry as it is tender and worshipping (she only knows this because Bahorel has told her. They’re not friends enough for her to get an invitation to one of his performances). He’s the kind of elf that has razor-sharp teeth and poison barbs on wrists and heels. Bahorel is madly in love with him, in a strange non-sexual way. Eponine can see why Bahorel’s on-and-off girlfriend has given up trying to understand their relationship, because it confuses the hell out of her too.

It’s near impossible for Jehan to get the kind of clothing he likes to wear in sizes that fit him, so he ends up making a lot of it himself. He modifies t-shirts and jumpers, does his own screen-printing, and occasionally even sews something from scratch. It’s through his clothing they eventually become friends (ish). She tells him in as off-hand a way as she can manage how much she loves the trousers he’s wearing that day; they both know it’s a peace offering, and he smiles at her and it’s fucking angelic, and he answers that he adores her boots, and they tentatively start talking. He teaches her a lot about people, gender and sexuality – because where would she have learned these things? Nobody teaches them in schools, and she never had the push needed to go looking for information herself. She still makes mistakes, but Jehan is infinitely patient once he realises she’s not being deliberately hurtful, and the faint grimaces he pulls when she stumbles spur her to want to be better.

They’re not friends, exactly. They don’t trust each other, for one. It’s nothing personal, just that when life screws you over repeatedly, you stop trying to count on anyone other than yourself, and you play all your cards so close to your chest that you can slot them between your ribs, tuck them behind pale bars for safe-keeping. Jehan, despite this, is always loud with his emotions, and Eponine can’t understand that. When Jehan is happy, everyone in the cafe knows it. When he’s sad, she can practically see the cartoon thunderclouds pouring rain onto his head. She can’t understand why you would let everyone know when you’re fragile and vulnerable, or why you would share the things that make you ecstatic, instead of hoarding them and keeping them hidden away, to be looked at only occasionally, lest they lose their shine or become too dog-eared for use.

They don’t hang out, either. Instead, Jehan will often stay behind after Les Amis have left and help her to clear away the chairs that have been scattered like dice. Sometimes Bahorel will also lend a hand, and watching their interaction never gets any less confusing, but she has to admire the way Jehan can fell the enormous, bearded muscle-man with one elegantly arched eyebrow and the curl of a smirk.

It figures that the one time they see each other elsewhere than an ABC meeting, everything goes horribly wrong. They run into each other quite by accident in the 11ème arrondissement and stop to talk in that stilted way that only seems to happen with acquaintances, gliding almost past each other to turn in a sort of dance, until they are facing each other with their backs turned to their destinations.

‘Eponine, how unexpectedly lovely to see you here.’

She tries to arrange the muscles in her face into a smile, caught off-guard by the encounter.  
‘Hey. Yeah, I was just on my way to the metro.’ She shifts her weight awkwardly, notices herself doing so, and immediately rearranges her posture. One deep, calming breath later, and she is in control once more. This is _her_ city, and she will not be ambushed on its streets. ‘How about you? Any exciting plans?’

‘Coffee with some friends, and then perhaps Père Lachaise.’

‘ _Les_ Amis?’

‘Oh no,’ Jehan laughs, and it bubbles like lava from his glossed lips. ‘Some of my course-mates, actually. I seem to see them so rarely these days...’ He waves a hand in an airy manner that is clearly practiced, and Eponine notices that his nails are painted too.

She can feel herself relaxing. This is the natural end to the conversation. She can smile, wish him a pleasant afternoon, and excuse herself with the pretext of not delaying him any further, because his friends must be waiting for him by now. They can both carry on with their days, secure in the knowledge that they have exchanged socially acceptable words and added a few more stones to something that looks like friendship (but still isn’t). Of course, that’s when everything goes wrong, and Eponine’s careful orchestrations fall apart like badly constructed scenery. Because the universe is kind of a bitch like that.

Jehan gets looks wherever he goes. Sometimes they’re just looks. More often, they’re Looks. This is one of the latter. It’s some older woman, just another face with salt-and-pepper hair and clicking soles, who hurries past but turns to stare as she does, but something like panic seizes Eponine by the throat and she squirms. Jehan’s expression goes instantly rigid – not a mask, but plain anger, followed by a smile that is all sharp teeth and glass shard. He gestures at her – his audience – in a one-handed flourish before sweeping into a deep bow – more of a curtsy, actually. Then, without a word, he turns and leaves, and Eponine is left standing on the pavement, and her arms somehow feel alien and useless, hanging by her sides when she knows they should be doing something (what?) and her heart is pounding in the back of her mouth. She can’t tell whether that’s residual fear (of what? Of some sixty-year-old? She’s angry too now) or shame. Hopes it’s the former. Knows it’s not. Eponine unlearned guilt when she was very little, but Jehan makes her feel guilty, and she resents him fiercely for it, because it’s easier than admitting she was wrong.

She can’t avoid him entirely, though: she still supervises Les Amis’ meetings, and he still attends (she feels stupid for having supposed, even for a second, that _he_ might stay away to avoid _her_ ). Her next mistake is to assume that Jehan will keep quiet. He may guard himself closely, but he never makes a secret of what he thinks or feels. She has spent the last few days at the receiving end of thunderous looks from Bahorel, and she has to admit that, if she didn’t live with him and knew him less well, that she might be worried, for all that she has seen more than her fair share of enormous men looking threatening and refuses to be cowed. Instead, she returns every glare measure for measure, and assumes (blunder after blunder) that the only reason Bahorel hasn’t actually _said_ anything is that Jehan wants to brush the whole episode out of his life. Wrong. Wrong, wrong and wrong again.

Jehan asked Bahorel not to say anything, because he wanted that job himself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Come say hi on Tumblr, where I am at-heart-a-gentleman. Comments, criticism, feedback and kudos all make me happy and fluttery inside.


	3. A Bit Like Snakes and Ladders

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ‘I sincerely don’t give a fuck whether you want to hear them, and I am not apologising to you. Not today, or any other day.’
> 
> She can almost see Jehan’s hackles go up – he has always had something of a cat about him – and the heels on his boots click with cold clarity as he steps further into the room, into the circle of his friends as though it were a stage or the arena in Rome. Eponine is outnumbered and she knows it. This may be her workplace, but it is currently full of his dearest friends, most of whom she barely knows at all. Terrible odds have never stopped her before though.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My lovely beta is currently on holiday and stranded from the glories of the internet, so any and all mistakes are my own.
> 
> I'm not particularly pleased with this chapter, and it's a little shorter than I would like, but I realised I had backed myself into a corner with what came before. Now, I just sort of want it to be done with so I can move on the with the 'verse.
> 
> Sorry.

The explosion is not slow in coming, and when it happens, the casualties litter the meeting room. Jehan is one of the last through the door, and as soon as Eponine moves to speak, he holds up a hand, barely looking at her, his slanted features arch.

‘Unless the next words out of your mouth are an apology, I do not want to hear them.’

Eponine isn’t actually sure what she _was_ going to say, but it sure as heck won’t be an apology now. All tentativeness falls from her as she purses her lips and raises her chin. Jehan may have about two heads on her, but no way in any circle of hell is she going to be talked down to, especially not in her workplace which these schoolboys turn into a rant club once a week.

‘I sincerely don’t give a fuck whether you want to hear them, and I am _not_ apologising to you. Not today, or any other day.’

She can almost see Jehan’s hackles go up – he has always had something of a cat about him – and the heels on his boots click with cold clarity as he steps further into the room, into the circle of his friends as though it were a stage or the arena in Rome. Eponine is outnumbered and she knows it. This may be her workplace, but it is currently full of _his_ dearest friends, most of whom she barely knows at all. Terrible odds have never stopped her before though.

‘You not caring about what others want is precisely the problem, Eponine. You care what they think, not what they want, and even then you only care so far as it relates to you.’

‘Whereas you – absolute bleeding heart, right? Look at you, preaching. What do you actually know about what people want, huh?’ Two can play at the slow-stepping, back-arching bottle-brush game.

Something snaps in Jehan. She’s not even sure what, or why, though she suspects he probably reads far more into her words than she ever put there (though she cannot honestly say she didn’t mean it). The descent into spitting viciousness is too rapid to follow, and within a minute, they are standing right in each other’s space and screaming. Nobody really knows what’s happening anymore, because neither allows the other to start a full sentence, let alone finish one, and any semblance of semi-constructive resolution of differences has been lost. To be honest, nobody even really knows what the alleged differences are anymore. Somewhere along the line, Eponine snarls the questions whether she’s meant to start keeping a knife under her pillow (it wouldn’t be the first time) because Jehan will sic his lap-dog on her, and then Jehan is snarling in her face that he could break her if he chose to and doesn’t need Bahorel to do that for him. She’s halfway through demanding whether it’s because he’s afraid to hit a girl, or does that somehow not apply here, when they are abruptly wrenched apart.

Courfeyrac is standing between them, one hand fisted in Jehan’s collar, and the other hovering above her solar plexus in a clear warning. There can be no doubt that he will not hesitate to deck them both. His face is like thunder, and from Jehan’s shell-shocked expression, she is not the only one who has never seen him this angry. Neither of them is even close to conceding defeat and they are both panting and snorting like angry bulls, but there is something about the usually affable Courfeyrac intervening so dramatically that pulls them both up short. The silence weighs heavy.

‘Right. I am not your kindergarten teacher, so I don’t want to hear what happened, or who started it, or whose fault it is, or what you were fighting about. I want you to sit the fuck down and shut the fuck up. Like civilised people. If you want to continue screeching incoherently at each other like a pair of demons, you can do it in your own time, elsewhere. I’m sure a reality show would be glad to have you.’ His voice is clipped and brooks no disagreement. Even Enjolras, normally the one to lead the charge whenever people need a good talking to, is silent and attentive, and that, perhaps more than anything else, brings Eponine off her battle high.

She returns to her corner, pulls out her maths homework and proceeds to ignore everyone and everything else. She doesn’t see Jehan move to his own seat, but she knows the moment he does because most of the remaining tension bleeds out of the room. She hears Bahorel mutter something under his breath, as well as the poet’s murmurous response, and then the meeting proceeds as normal. By the time its end draws near, the Amis seem to have relegated the screaming match to the backs of their minds, and only Courfeyrac’s face when she occasionally flicks a glance at him is still drawn.

Before everyone begins the shuffle to retrieve belongings and rearrange furniture – at which point nobody speaking will have a hope in hell of being properly listened to – Bahorel pipes up, and Eponine tenses briefly. She may not be afraid of him, but she still has to share a living space with the man, and that is a lot easier for everyone without death-threats or posturing. Besides, she’s sort of fond of him (he’s good for Gavroche), and his non-involvement in her fight with Jehan has been something of an unexpected blessing. She needn’t have worried though; he’s just mentioning some dude he apparently met in a bar and whom he’s thinking on introducing to the group. The Triumvirate of Doom all visibly perk up, and she’s oddly reminded of a pack of spaniels, which is almost cute, except for the part where they make her life more complicated than it needs to be. In any case, it clears the last remaining clouds from Courfeyrac’s face.

And then everyone is filing out, leaving Eponine to set whatever has fallen afoul of their revolutionary fervour back in its proper place. Jehan approaches as she is piling chairs on tables, and wordlessly pushes up the sleeves on his velvet jacket before grabbing a chair in each hand and setting them upside-down on the table-top. She thinks she probably ought to say something, but just as before, she is not allowed to. Jehan cuts her off before she can even start.

‘Just. Don’t.’ He sounds tired, and she does as he asks.

It will be even less of a friendship from now on than it was before, but Eponine has always been resilient and adaptable. She’ll make do.

(The first time he lets her read something she has written, the magnitude of it takes her breath away, though she hides it near-completely.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Reviews etc are like food to me, and I would love for people to come and say hi on Tumblr -- my URL is at-heart-a-gentleman (also if anyone knows you to put links into ANs, that would be cool).

**Author's Note:**

> Fun fact: people working in theatres in France are not paid. Instead, they make their money from tips, and it is standard practice for theatre-goers to bring change for that purpose.
> 
> The Cned is a system of correspondence courses, because there's no equivalent of community college that fit the structure I wanted.
> 
> For French cultural references etc, I am forever indebted to the wonderful Tumblr user human-ithink, who is a miracle in every way.
> 
> Come say hi to me on Tumblr, where I'm at-heart-a-gentleman


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